Street Life

As I walked home from class yesterday, I passed by quite a commotion at a telecenter. A woman was inside fighting with I think the man who runs the place. They were yelling at each other and it had gathered quite a crowd of people. I feel like in the states, if something like that occurred, people would back away. But here, it attracts a HUGE crowd of onlookers. I wanted to take a picture, but it didn't seem appropriate.

Further along on my way home a man pointed at me (he was about 40 feet away from me) and yelled (I'm not exaggerating) "YOU'RE AN AMERICAN!!" So I was definitely caught off guard, not to mention a bit unnerved. The man continued to walk towards me, and there was no way I could deny my American-ness, so he walked along with me while I was on my way home. He spoke so very very loudly. Great way to draw even more attention to myself, but I couldn't get him to stop, and he seemed excited enough to finally be speaking in English again. But I knew what he was getting at… that he wanted to get back to America, and saw the young American girl walking through the neighborhood as his shot to do just that. I told him it was a shame that I lived in Senegal now and wouldn't be returning to the states. He asked if I was married and I said yes, with two children. He said it was a shame, that I was too young, and I should've waited to marry a Senegalese guy. At the very least, he left without asking for my phone number.

Dakar at 4:30am: Sitting on the front porch is usually reserved for men and old women. There are always men sitting outside of houses talking, not only because this society is built on the art of talking, but also because so many of the men are unemployed right now. I want to be able to sit outside on the porch during the day and observe what's going on, but I'm kept from doing it because it's not generally accepted for women to do the same. So last night, I took the liberty of sitting out on the front porch since relatively no one was around at 4:30am and I was awake. It seems like that is the time when this city is the most pleasant. Usually, there are people everywhere, animals everywhere, traffic running you over, strange smells, pollution, all sorts of things. And so of course, at 4:30am, the city is still not completely asleep… but compared to usual all is calm. There was a rooster crowing from one of the houses across the street. I could hear the holy men at the mosque praying. There was always at least one taxi driving down the street, and men occasionally walking down the main road. One of the kids at the shoe tree in front of my house was still awake, but the others were sleeping on mats on the ground. The city was so silent compared to normal… almost calm and relaxing. Which is quite a switch from normal. And no, don't worry, I don't make it a habit of being awake at 4:30am.